The Road of Irresponsibility
by Kasan Soulblade
Summary: iz paved with catnip? Well, zat depends on who you ask, non? Realite is no quite what is seems on it's crystaline surface, and beneith... a seducive darkness beckons. Post Fort Dragonia spoilers.
1. See, Nightmares Come True

The Road of Irresponsibility….

See, even nightmares come true

_To my readers, _

_Got this idea in my first playthrough. I wanted to tell this story during the first... but you know how hard Chrono games are to track. They're filled with twists, turns, and open endedness, so I played through to the end, listened to the theroys, and took notes. Now, I'm going to be working on this CC piece. Hopefully you'll all enjoy._

_Kasan Soulblade _

It was… there are no words. Nothing in his vocabulary can capture the strangeness, the wrongness, that greets him every time he opens his eyes. Looking down at his fingers he is confronted with claws, from claw to knuckle his gaze travels and is treated to a viewing of tan fur.

Impossible is such a pale word, drained of vital meaning from overuse and flippant treatment. Yet it hovers on his lipless mouth only to fall short. His mouth isn't his own, its motions are alien, and so the familiar word gargles in his throat. He'd allowed only one sound, and that is the failed word that morphs into a purr before it dies.

Tears brimming her eyes, knife drawn, Kid approaches, her tears made bright with hate.

"You… you bastard, ya think this is funny do ya!"

_No_

He opens his mouth in one final plea; a harsh cough escapes his throat. The distance between them is narrowed as Kid takes one step, then another, her grim intent marking her face with lines of hate and heat. Language, it seems, has betrayed him. Snapping his mouth shut –ignoring the odd grit of fang hitting fang- he shakes his head back and forth. Surely such a desperate move wasn't Lynx like.

_Please, _He begs mutely. Hands lifted, fingers spread wide, he looks past the screen of his own raised claws and meets the summer sky of her eyes. _Please, I'm not him… Look at me, see!_

She sees her foe retreating, eyes wide, jaw clenched tight in grim determination. However, like all language, seeing and comprehension have become different concepts. One can see without comprehension, and in this case the former occurs without the latter.

Wincing back from the surreal light that catches the daggers edge -and it burns, how the light burns!- he takes another step back, shaking his head violently.

She charges, with that thin beam of burning light, and he winces as he feels the blade sink into his gut.

_Serge..._

_Monsieur..._

Both voices are familiar, distant. He folds over the blade, staggering back, taking the weapon with him as he falls. Comprehension, or something like it, lights Kid's eyes. It's a slow realization, not yet taken root, even as he soundlessly hits the stone floor.

_"Give me your knife, I'll finish him off..."_

Hesitance, a step back taken one moment too late...

_"I never told you about Lucca."_

Light slashes through flesh. Steel pierces sun kissed flesh and draws blood. Vitals and blood made dark by solid form and shadows glint with macabre moisture. Lifting his head he screams, and all that parts through his mouth is a choked roar.

_You want the nightmares to end? Meet me at the sea of Eden..._

Groggily his eyes open, he lifts his head and sees again tan fur that ends in a black point. Closing his eyes he soundlessly begs slumber to come and he curls upon himself. A stream of quiet whimpers escape him, breaking the quiet murmur of water over stone. Throtling sensation he scrunches his eyes until they hurt, his hands move with a will of thier own. They grip, relax, and grip again. Something with the texture of grain and the oiliness of fish flesh crumbles under his fingers.

And... he tastes water on the air. The omnipresent rumble of water over stone alludes to size and falling, of earth meeting the softest purest blue... The luquid pounding had always been a lulliby...

And despite knowing these things. Of lullaby's and water's soothing song he shivers. He quakes at... yet longs for the black behind his lids. Nightmares never were real, they never came true. Only good dreams come true, never nightmares. Nightmares were there to be laughed at, ridiculed, then forgotten under the bright light of the day...

Yet hard on belief came taunting realiaztion. Under this rosy sky and oil-salt sand it seemed as if all the nightmares of his world were coming true.


	2. Surreal Reality

The Road of Irresponsibility….

Surreal reality

The sky was... different. Instead of blue marked with the occasional tuft of white the heavens were a melding of opposites. Dawn pink tendrils rose like flames at the tip top of coiling blue. And the blue... it was not blue at all, rather a mishmash of a hundred hues that were, in one way or another, closely and distantly related to the color of sea and sky.

The earth was the color of shell. Yet they were chosen hues, selected for their garishness. The humbler colors -like those sported by the grey mollusk- were excluded from the palette. Only the secret hues, those beautiful colors made more lovely due to their scarcity, were present.

The earth was made of these hues, and the surreal light that poured down from above from everywhere at once caught the edges of the vibrant sand…

Closing his eyes he shuddered as crimson and rose rainbows played like mist in the dark behind his eyes. Rubbing at his face, trying valiantly to ignore the sensation of his hands pressing down on fur, he pressed the leathery span of his "palms" into his scrunched up eyes.

Despite all his efforts though, he did not wake up. He made his eyes hurt, but he didn't wake up. When the pain finally became unbearable he opened his eyes and he was once more treated to the sight of an earth made of shell and a sky that soundlessly burned from the top down.

The pain in his brain, the pain of his eyes, was nothing though compared to the gnawing fury in his gut. Eyes pressed into slits he pushed off the ground, and it crinkled like bits of salt under his pads. And like salt it caught in the small knicks he'd inflicted on himself while kneeding the earth an eternity ago. His fingers were thick and clumbsy, numb and clawed, and his limbs shivered at even this minor exertion.

Understandable then, how many times it took him to rise, and that when he finally did find his feet that he was panting with the exertion of it all.


	3. Wrongside Up

The Road of Irresponsibility….

Wrongside up

_A/N: I might be goin' overboard stressing the unrealness of the "Vortex" that Serge finds himself, if so I appologize, but I have to admit it _is_ kinda fun. I tweeked events a little here, yes, I know you're supposed to sneak in, but I like it better this way._

The tree stood straight and tall. It had thick frongs that clicked and clattered at an unfelt breeze and was -unlike everything else here- the right color. No garish pink of swirling azure marred the brown of it's trunk, and it neither burned from the top down nor flowed from the bottem up. He'd wandered the length and width of this pink island, his eyes seared by the alien landscape and what was left of his shaken mind was boggled by the stubborn defience of "reality" at every turn.

Standing, looking down, he considered the palm tree that could have come from his home world. It flourished and grew tall and proud. It's leaves stired over an abyss though, and it's trunk jutted out at a mathmatically precise ninty degree angle. Unaware of it's own outre state the palm had grown long and proud. The tree as if in the grip of playfull breezes and it's long leaves teased the sky that was neither up nor down, but slowly burning. Wrenching his gaze away he turned and he would have ran. But the body he'd been chained to was strange, it's gait wasn't right. Memories of how he ran and how he'd seen Lynx run -Half bent, two legs and a hand pushing agains the earth. One hand gripping the bone staffed scythe...- failed him. His feet tangled on violet hued garments, then his tail got tangled in the mix and he let out a howl of pain.

His beastial cry echoed on nothing, thundered against the courdors of the alien reality, and came back as a mad, disjointed, peal of thunder.

The rumbles started only to trail off, then rolled from the center to the begining crack only to end in roaring silence and begin again. He cringed back, pads of his paws pressed against his ears, willing with all his soul that this was a bad dream... He'd wake up any moment now.

_Drawn claws scrabbing on the polished floor, of Viper Manor... Scraping over the stone floor with it's learing stone dragons... A glint of light catching steel and making the fire touched stone burns his eyes..._

"You, Cat!"

Slowly he let his hands drop. Impossible how a whisper cut over the disjointed roaring of heaven. Still it did, and he turned in response, neverminding all the impossibilities of the moment.

Hunched, the form was bent double... almost consuming it's whole frame due to it's stoop. clad in dun brown, it contrasted with the rosy, vibrant, hues of the world. It was a stark figure, and despite it's deminitive stature and soft voice it was an authoritive soul. Extending one bandaged hand the hooded creature hissed at him.

"Come, we don't have much time. Lightning hits the lowly things first, not the tallest. This place... it's not like _home_."

To that, Serge could not help but agree.


End file.
